From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Appropriate because, despite a straightforward plot, The Bacchae is probably the least easy of Euripides‘ extant plays to analyse. Lines 1 - 168 Quotes. Nothing is quite as it seems in the world of The Bacchae, an ancient Greek tragedy about the god Dionysus and the naive King Pentheus. My students love how organized the handouts are and enjoy tracking the themes as a class.”, read analysis of Disguise, Deception, and Identity. "The Journal of Hellenistic Studies." The Bacchae by Euripides, in a version by David Greig. Irony and motif are used in The Bacchae to express the … However, Dionysus’ aim is to show them the other side of themselves—to get them to give into their irrational nature, a plan that clearly works. The Bacchae, however, has proven frustratingly ambiguous in its treatment of gods and men. Here, Dionysus, the god of wine and of tragedy, and also madness, appears as a character on stage. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. One of the principal moral messages of the play extols the importance of maintaining fundamental balances in one's social and natural life, and Euripides demonstrates this principle in the structure and content of the The Bacchae. First, Euripides asserts the centrality of theater to Dionysian ritual. Third, thematic dualities feature strongly. In both plays, the theme of female rebellion is presented with women who are ultimately punished for straying from conventionally established idea of being a woman, leading one to realize the plays’ favor for traditional gender roles. -Graham S. “Would not have made it through AP Literature without the printable PDFs. As the last work of his life, Euripides chose to write a play that discussed, among other themes, the origin and nature of his own art. The god's implicit message is that not only is there space within society for the irrational, but that such a space must be allowed for that society to exist and thrive. Characters. In this session, Dr. Nooter and Director Monty Cole will discuss the previous session’s staged reading of The Bacchae and how its directorial choices reflect fundamental questions of gender, identity, and self-knowledge. Edith Hall (Professor of Classics, King's College London) discusses some of the key themes in Euripides' Bacchae. (The Bacchae 1011-1013)Female justice of the Maenads, revealed with a sword, bursts with violent passion. Writing the play in exile, while watching the glory of Athens disintegrate near the end of the Peloponnesian War, Euripides explores the disintegration of old systems of belief and the creation of new ones. This single stretch of a hundred years saw the reign of Pericles, the great Athenian statesman and builder of the Parthenon; the final defeat of the Persians at the Battle of Salamis; the philosophical teachings of Anaxagoras, Protagoras, and Socrates; the construction of the Theatre of Dionysus; the playwriting careers of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes; and, ultimately, the decli… Dionysus, returning to his mother's birthplace, wants to come "home" and be recognized and worshiped as a god. Disguise, Deception, and Identity Nothing is quite as it seems in the world of The Bacchae, an ancient Greek tragedy about the god Dionysus and the naive King Pentheus. The Bacchae of Euripides, Cambridge University Press, 1880. Below you will find the important quotes in The Bacchae related to the theme of Gods and Mortals. Second, there are formal dualities, including the chorus versus the main action of the drama, and the events recounted versus the events enacted. The play opens with the god Dionysus, the son of Zeus. Struggling with distance learning? He is known as a symbol for wine, religious ecstasy, lust and irrationality. Third, Euripides wants to comment upon the play as an art form. Through the dissolution of Pentheus, we see the terrible consequences that can occur when a god’s divinity is … Part of what makes The Bacchae still timely today is its exploration of religious conflict. "My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." Man and the Natural World; Rules and Order; Religion; Madness; Transformation; Violence; Women and Femininity; Foreignness and 'the Other' Characters; Analysis; Quotes; Flashcards; … A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, translated by John Black, H. G. Bohn, 1861. They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!”, “This is absolutely THE best teacher resource I have ever purchased. Conflicting religious beliefs are at the core of much strife in human history. The Bacchae is distinctive in that the chorus is integrated into the plot and the god is not a distant presence, but a character in the play, indeed, the protagonist. Our, "Sooo much more helpful than SparkNotes. The Bacchae | Themes Social Order. He traveled with a group of women, the maenads or the bacchae, giving them as much wine as they wanted. Themes. Second, Euripides comments upon the relation of the individual self to the theater as spectacle and performance. Binary opposition is the two opposite terms, such as good versus bad. (including. The effeminate Pentheus, stripped of his masculinity and authority, is revealed as a vain, boastful and lecherous creature. When King Pentheus of Thebes refuses to worship him, the play erupts with violence. First, Euripides establishes a number of pairings between and even within characters: Dionysus takes two forms on stage, Pentheus serves as his double, and they switch roles in the course of the play. The play seems to suggest that violence…, Instant downloads of all 1423 LitChart PDFs In Euripides’ The Bacchae and in the Medea, there are significant binary oppositions in both plays. Fun fact: Joseph Haj was an actor with SITI Company early in his career. A stranger comes to town—the notion of the outsider who changes the social order is an old one in literature, and persists in narratives of all kinds into the current day. Gods and Mortals Quotes in The Bacchae. But perhaps that’s the point—by creating an uncertain world, Euripides highlights the folly and deception involved in the identities people construct for themselves, arguing that life is infinitely more complex and…, There is an important tension between the world of the gods and the world of the mortals in The Bacchae. Wisdom (Sophia). Men face off against women, and the irrational does battle with the rational. So I must teach this Pentheus, teach all of Thebes, what kind of god I am. The wild mountain is contrasted with the walled city, and the mortal denies—albeit futilely—the divine. Stab through the throat that godless man. The central conflict of The Bacchae can be seen as a religious one. Annenberg Learner. For more than three decades, SITI Company has redefined and revitalized contemporary theater through its collaborative, groundbreaking work. Explore Course Hero's library of literature materials, including documents and Q&A pairs. The only Greek drama to feature the god Dionysus as a central character, the Bacchae is a drama about belief and faith, expressed with Euripides’ characteristic willingness to complicate easy answers. By denying or opposing the irrational, as Pentheus did, the person who opposes it, or the society that denies it, will be torn apart. The Bacchae is a perfect example of these themes, especially regarding the question of gender (self) and the differences between women and men (other). The Bacchae of Euripides (The Bacchae Women) "The Bacchae." Euripides was writing during the beginning of the Dionysian invasion from the Near East, and so his play signals Dionysus's still incomplete integration into Greek religious and social life. As the last work of his life, Euripides chose to write a play that discussed, among other themes, the origin and nature of his own art. But if Thebans in this city, in their anger, try to make those Bacchic women leave, to drive them from the mountains forcibly, then I, commander of these Maenads, will fight them. The Bacchae is considered to be not only one of Euripides's greatest tragedies, but also one of the greatest ever written, modern or ancient. In the beginning of the play, Pentheus is an external spectator and onlooker, gazing upon the bacchic rites with a removed, disapproving gaze. The main conflict in The Bacchae is between these two conflicting behavioral patterns, the rational and the instinctual, disciplines often referred to as the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Binary opposition is used to present both sides of a contrast (Marvin, 1). LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Bacchae, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. His play attempts to answer the question of whether there can be a space for the irrational within a well-structured and ordered space, either interior or exterior. He emasculates himself, loses his original identity as the rational sovereign, and exposes himself to the drama and its consequences—in his case, death. Think of the wildest college party you have ever heard of and you have a good idea of what was going on. The Bacchae of Euripides is a major source for the ancient Greek conception of Dionysus, but not the only source. The Bacchae depicts a struggle to the death between the twin forces of control (restraint) and freedom (release), and permits Dionysus to provide an answer to this question. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. He masterfully both draws the audience's attention to the artifice of the play, to its conventions and techniques, while at the same time asserting the seductive power of that very artifice, both over the characters in the play and over the audience itself. This amateur production is presented by special arrangement with Casarotto Ramsay & Associates “So Thebes, I’m back.” These are the first lines of The Bacchae, spoken by Dionysos, the ancient Greek god of – … Dionysus, the god of the mask, offers his worshippers the free… Written in Macedon and performed posthumously in Athens, the story is simple: In The Bacchae and the Medea, Euripides used binary opposition to highlight the central themes. The rites alluded to in the play were replete with masked dancers, choral performances and processions of citizens in costumes. This commentary contains the Oxford Classical Text of Murray. Once in the woods, Pentheus cannot see the bacchants from the ground, and … Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. Be manifest; reveal yourself with a sword! The Chorus delivers much of the exposition and expounds poetically on themes, but it is still meant to represent a group of characters. Religious Beliefs. Euripides uses misunderstandings, both deliberate and accidental, to construct a morally ambiguous play that resists easy interpretation. As the God of Wine and Revelry, he was fun-loving. Aristophanes gives us a very different, comedic version of Dionysus in his play, the Frogs , which was produced in 405 BC, around the same time as the production of the Bacchae … The play is sprinkled throughout with oppositions, doubles and pairings that can be organized into three categories. In the case of The Bacchae, the Chorus is constituted by the Bacchae, devout female worshippers of Dionysus that the god has brought with him from Asia. The characters in the play, also believers, have to make a critical choice—either follow the god Dionysus or risk…, The Bacchae is chiefly concerned with two very different ways of being. While Dionysus... Duality and Disguise. As the female Chorus in The Bacchae declares, —O Justice, principle of order, spirit of custom, come! The Star Tribune named The Bacchae “one of the hottest arts and entertainment events to catch in the Twin Cities in 2020." Cadmus and Tiresias are a pair, and the bacchic chorus and the mad women of Thebes provide a contrasting set. Schlegel, Augustus Wilhelm. The Bacchae The Bacchae – Key Points Key Teaching Points and Discussion Prompts. But for Euripides, the relation between Dionysus and the established social order was still being contested. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of “The Bacchae” by Euripides. It’s important to remember that when this play was first performed in ancient Greece, audiences would have been much more familiar with the mythical backstories involved, and, of course, many would have believed in them. K EPPLE = Laurence R Kepple, ‘The broken victim: Euripides Bacchae 969–970,’ HSCP 80 (1976) 107–9. The Bacchae Summary. In the spirit of the wine and revelry he represented, women could become priestesses of Dionysus, or ‘‘Bacchae,’’ simply by drinking, dancing, singing, and releasing their inhibitions. THE BACCHAE 2 v.2.1 I'll demonstrate to him, to all in Thebes, that I was born a god. The festivals for Dionysius often involved drunken orgies. On the one hand, there is the “civilized” order represented by King Pentheus which, generally, is the way the Thebans live their life. Dionysus, the god of the mask, offers his worshippers the freedom to be someone other than themselves, and in doing so, the chance to achieve a religious ecstasy through theater itself. In Euripides’ Bacchae, the identity of gods and mortals is under scrutiny. The Bacchae deals with the different relationships of theater to various aspects of society, including its relationship to art itself. It has been interpreted as both Euripides’ approval of Dionysian nature worship and his condemnation of its excesses. Athens. The way the content is organized, LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in. LitCharts Teacher Editions. You can view our. Conforming to social norms is essential for the continuance of any civilization. The shroud of secrecy that hung over these proceedings is appropriately reflected in Euripides’ The Bacchae. But when offered the chance by Dionysus, he moves from the margins to center stage of the drama himself. BIBLIOGRAPHY D ODDS = Euripides, Bacchae, edited with introduction and commentary by E R Dodds, Oxford: 1960. Dionysius, the main character in The Bacchae, is the one god in Greek Mythology that most people can get behind. 2nd ed. The Bacchae Themes Opposing forces. The god Dionysus comes home to Greece bringing with him the religion he's inspired all over Asia. The Bacchae Irony is the presentation of ideas in a way, opposite to the expectation of the audience. Themes. 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